Call to Arms for the dreaded U052 Wrong Printhead Error

[macnicol]

This is a "call to arms" for all of you Canon customers who have had this problem and have had their printers disabled because of it.  Please respond with the model of your printer and if you were able to fix it, what you did to fix it. 

We need to put pressure on Canon to respond this product defect.  It appears to be bad firmware that does not allow the user to override the problem and to continue to use the printer even in a degraded mode.  From my investigations the problem is NOT a printhead issue - no way one can be printing fine and then have this error alert without having changed the printhead or ink cartridges!

Canon, PLEASE take this issue seriously and provide a solution across the affected models.  If nothing else there should be a trade-in allowance for those printers that have been affected by this product defect.

I have had many Canon printers because they have superior functional specifications. I want to be able to continue using Canon products but only if I can have confidence that this product defect will not destroy my investment.

If Canon is unresponsive our next step should be to aggressively publisize this product defect on social media and on major product vendor outlet sites as negatives reviews.

Forum Users, please reply with your affected model number(s) and with details of any succdessful fix procedure.

[Yule]

All the stocked up ink cartridges for this printer become useless too. Who's bearing the cost???

[thezillionthsue]

Don't know who's bearing the cost, but Canon are certainly making some money out of it, if they're genuine Canon cartridges .....

[Aardvark]

"Has anybody had any joy with getting an answer from Canon about all these people with the same issue?? I think it's disgraceful." This thread has been going now for over 14 months and there has been no reliable cure, either from enterprising technically minded posters or Canon themselves. I think we can all draw our own conclusions about Canon's attitude to their customers. This attitude has driven loyal Canon customers away to buy from other manufacturers.

[penmagic]

I have a Canon MG 5320 printer.  My printhead was not printing blue anymore, no matter what I tried.  I called the canon tech and they suggested a new print head.  I need the backloading printer for my card company (which Canon stopped making) so I bought a new print head for $104.00 total cost.  Just got it  in the mail, installed it and got the U052 message. I went through the whole procedure of reseating it about 4 times with no luck.

  To see if this was a printer error or printhead error, I took out all the ink cartridges and installed my old MG5320 printhead that I had just taken out.  NO error message with this one.  Put the new printhead back in and again the error message.  Canon parts is closed now so I can't call until tomorrow and don't know if I can return it, but since I was told they were non returnable I am doubtful. I have just bought a head cleaning kit and hope it will clean the old one as from what I see on this forum the new one is unusable. 

  To be clear, this problem is being caused by the newly purchased printhead and cured when I put in my old printhead. So fair warning for those considering purchasing a new printhead.

[puppylove]

Unless you have an insanely expensive model (not sure there are any that are having these issues) it never makes sense to buy printheads let alone printheads and a cleaning kit. You can get a very good all in one these days for $100 or even less on sale.  I got one that is $200 retails for $75 after a sale and a rebate last month from another brand.

Then, you have a brand new warranty plus the double warranty from your credit card, so you're good for at least another 2 years.

[penmagic]

I couldn't agree more.  However, the problem is that I need a back loading printer to print 110# cardstock for my invitation business.  I loved my MG 5320 and I have a MG 6220 also.  They make beautiful print outs and handle very heavy cardstock.  I have bought HP and Epson and they do not work for me.  So I was trying to save my favorite printer.

[puppylove]

Do you mean you researched this function and got ones from hp and epson that said they did it, and they didn? Or just that you got printers from those brands before and they did't happen to have that function?

I think this would be a relatively easy feature to find, even at a bit more but still well worth it. I would return those things you bought asap and put that $ towards something new (non Canon!)

[Aardvark]

Although I sympathise with you, if you had taken the time to read all the posts in this thread you would have discovered that wasting money on a new printerhead does not cure the problem. Canon know this and continue to rake in money from the poor unfortunate souls who think this will fix it. There should be some sort of legal way to get your money back from what must constitute misleading or fraudulent practice by Canon.

[GEDEd]

MG5320 - rarely used. Bought it two years ago. Generally worked great.....a few days ago I got the dreaded U052 error....I could live with that. Now it doesn't even power on. I bought third party ink from ebay....worked fine. Maybe it caused an issue. No idea. Lesson learned....never buying ANY printer again.

[ed-be]

Try# stupidU502errorcode on twitter.